01-May-2011 our life. daily.
This morning we had some friends over. Liz and Ali grew up just down the street from each other. She now lives just a mile or so from us here at the marina. I find that to be a pretty strange coincidence. Especially considering that probably ninety percent of our graduating class still live within ten miles of where they grew up.

The afternoon was beautiful once again, so we spent most of it lying around on deck soaking up some much needed sun. I can’t tell you how much nicer life on a boat is when the weather is cooperating.

When Ouest was having dinner tonight she noticed that I had left my hat lying on the stairs. Not where it belongs. No sir. She began pointing and talking, making it clear that the hat needed to be put away, and all I could think was, “Oh Lord, already she is taking after her mother.”

We spend a lot of time these days in our bedroom. Ha ha. Actually Ouest just loves getting up on the bed, bouncing around, reading books, whatever. Today she received a new book as a gift from our friends and for at least five minutes tonight she sat on the bed studying it intently. So intently that I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was upside down. It was cute though.

02-May-2011 our life. daily.
I’ve mentioned Ouest’s obsession with garbage in the past. We spend a lot of time these days cleaning up the beach, the sidewalk, and the floor of Taco Bell. Her word for garbage is sort of a throat clearing sound that you can hear her say clearly a couple of times in this video. Yes, her disdain for garbage even extends to pictures with garbage in them.

03-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
I took the boat out today for the autopilot sea trial. I had the engine warming up when the installer arrived, but as he went about the dockside calibration work the engine died. I tried a few times but it wouldn’t start up again. From the sounds of it I immediately suspected air in the fuel line. I opened up the first bleeder valve and a rush of air bubbles quickly escaped. And so on down the line until we were flowing smooth again. Five minutes later and we were running again, glad that it had happened when it did.

Outside the breakwall we went through the rest of the setting up process. The very first thing is to drive the boat in circles until the compass is calibrated. We circled and circled and circled but the display never told us to stop. Eventually it was worked out that the compass was located in a bad spot, in the battery compartment, and needed to be moved. Fortunately the extra twelve feet of wire hadn’t been clipped off and we were able to rather quickly relocate the compass to a locker in the bathroom, away from everything. From then on the autopilot calibration went smoothly, and within an hour we were squared away.

So at the end of the day what this all means is that we can now enter MEXICO as our destination point on the electronic charts, turn on the autopilot, go to sleep, and wake up in Puerto Vallarta. Should work out nicely.

In TickTack wind instrument news today we are again without a working wind indicator. This was not a cheap purchase and you could say we’re a little unhappy with the product at the moment. Their customer service will be what makes or breaks our view of the company and it’s product. That didn’t start well either as my detailed online service request got kicked back to me today as undeliverable. Tomorrow morning they get a call.

03-May-2011 our life. daily.
Today was one of those baby days in which nothing seems to go quite right. Ouest woke up early, then had to leave the house early, then missed her nap time because the autopilot took longer than it should have, then didn’t eat any of her lunch, and then didn’t eat her dinner because she couldn’t stop yawning. It’s amazing how one or two seemingly small things can completely throw off the balance of an entire day for a baby.

With the onset of summer like weather here in the Bay we have been able to begin spending much more time, and more enjoyable time, outdoors. Ouest can play for a long time if you throw a bucket of water and a tea set in front of her. Of course you need to be willing to drink the water from the tea cup. She won’t be fooled by a fake slurp, and will in fact double check that you’ve swallowed all of it.

Ouest’s hair is getting long. But despite having purchased ponytails and barrettes Ali has yet to take action. I think she thinks that once she does Ouest’s hair that she is officially not a baby any more.

04-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
I started work on cleaning the winches today. To be honest I wasn’t really expecting quite the horrible state I found them in once I opened them up. The grease has hardened to the consistency of caulk and requires scraping out between each and every tooth in the gears. Hundreds and hundreds of gook clogged gears. This boat has eight winches. Our last boat had two. Cleaning them was a one hour job done every couple of months. This job is going to take, well, I don’t want to know how long.

This got me to thinking about the very first time I cleaned a winch. Back on the Pacific crossing, still pretty new to the whole sailboat thing. That was the day I finally discovered that the winches had two speeds. They could be spun either direction. Up to that point I’d been cranking that winch handle about six times more than I needed to be. I suppose that was a defining moment in the Bumfuzzle saga. Proof positive that we were learning as we went. We won’t get to have many experiences like that this time out. Which is sort of a shame. It’s one of the reasons Ali and I considered not going sailing again. We enjoy the learn as we go thrill of doing something we’ve never done before.

When we were driving around South America we told ourselves that if we weren’t pregnant by the time we hit Europe we were going to buy two cheap as can be motorcycles and drive them across Africa. Ali’s never driven a motorcycle. But this is how our brains work, and is why we’ll be sad not to have quite so many of the, “Oh, duh,” moments with this boat. Making up for that is that we’ll have our kids with us and will get to see the world through their eyes instead.

04-May-2011 our life. daily.
Absolutely beautiful day here in the Bay. We haven’t spent a lot of time walking around at the end of the peninsula the marina is located on because out there the cold wind is always blowing like stink across the Bay. People have this perception of California as being warm and sunny year round. It’s not. We’ve been wearing jeans and sweatshirts exclusively for months and months now. But today the water was dead calm and it was in the seventies before we were out of our pajamas. We walked up to the end of the road and enjoyed clear blue views across the Bay to the Golden Gate.

And then when Ouest woke up from her nap and it was in the eighties we thought, “Well we have to do something.” So we quickly packed a picnic and drove up the road to the Berkeley hills to visit Tilden Park and the “Little Farm” there.

Ouest has never been near a cow and wasn’t inclined to get too near these cows either. She did however enjoy the chickens, ducks, and geese squawking about.

05-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
We’re watching the weather now and it looks like we may have a window a week from now, which means we’ve got a lot of last minute running around to do, as well as a few little jobs that it would be nice to wrap up.

I continued an e-mail exchange with TackTick support today and think I’ve got the wind instrument problem solved. It does appear that there is some RF signal problems in this area. I guess they’ve got issues all over the Bay area. Which I can’t imagine bodes well for the future of their company when the America’s Cup rolls in to San Francisco. I don’t think those boats will appreciate customer service telling them they might want to try moving over a few slips.

What I did learn that sort of half solved my issue was that once the unit is powered up, if it doesn’t find a signal, it stops looking. So you could stand there all day trying to get it to work from different angles and it never will. But if you shut it off, walk to a different spot on the boat and turn it on again, you just might get it. And it seems that once it acquires the signal it manages to hang on to it.

So what it comes down to is that if I lived here I’d be pissed and I’d be getting my money back. But since I don’t live in the Bay and don’t plan on spending a whole lot of time in areas as wired up as San Francisco, this shouldn’t continue to be a big issue for me. We’ll see. The test will come soon enough I suppose.

05-May-2011 our life. daily.
We washed the boat this morning as a family. Meaning Ouest was right smack dab in the middle of things the entire time. If we set down a brush she would pick it up and resume cleaning right where we left off. If I was bent over in a particularly awkward spot to clean off some mold she would be sure to climb right over the top of me to get somewhere. And when her mama showed her how to spray her papa with the hose she was all over that too.

As a show of appreciation I installed a swimming pool on the boat while she was napping. Seriously, this boat has it all. Swimming pools, movie stars…

06-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
Continuing to plug away at the little things that make up our big list. The other day when coming back into the dock I couldn’t get the throttle to go below about one third open. That made things a little trickier than they should have been and required a bit of finesse with the gear shifting. When I took apart the steering unit today I found that the two bolts holding the throttle cable in place were loose and were leaving the cable to swing around in circles. A nice easy fix. Just like I like them. Also, a couple of winches are done and clicking away quite nicely. Smooth like butta’. Leaky bilge pump hose is tightened up. And on and on it goes.

We’ve also been thinking about what we’re going to do with Ouest at sea. Until we’re actually out there it’s sort of hard to figure out, but we do think that a tether is far more likely to be used effectively than a life jacket, so today we tried that on her. She was immediately in love with it. We couldn’t get it off of her until it was time to change into her pajamas. Our cockpit is nice in that it is an enclosed little area with a sort of “fence” around it, then an area for the winches, and then the side rails. A picture would explain it better, but at the moment I don’t have one handy. Suffice it to say that when she is on deck while at sea she’ll be tethered into the cockpit with a nice six foot lanyard that will keep her from going overboard. Well, that and the fact that she’ll be watched over like a hawk. And of course this is all just theory until we are out there and see what really works for us as a family at sea. I’m sure our safety protocols will evolve quickly. Ali and I had none on the last boat, so we’re sort of learning the art of safety from scratch.

Food stores are starting to make their way aboard. Not that we’re stocking up on much for this trip, but it’s always nice to pack in a few of those things that you know you won’t find down the road. Especially favorites of Ouest’s.

07-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
We’re watching the weather closely now, trying to pick a very smooth weather window for our first few days out. Word of advice for any would-be world cruisers out there: don’t go out bashing into nasty weather on your first passage. Or at least don’t go out knowing it’s going to be nasty. Anyway, we had started to get excited about a window opening up, but that has since closed. We’re at the mercy of mother nature now. The trick is not to let the ants in our pants get the best of us.

You’ve got to appreciate it when the guy at Radio Shack who doesn’t have a clue what you are talking about doesn’t try to pretend that he does, and instead sends you to the mom and pop shop across town where they know exactly what you are saying.

07-May-2011 our life. daily.
Went over to Sausalito today to visit some friends and see some of the work they’ve been doing on their boat. They’re planning to leave about a month behind us for SoCal so it’s been a crazy few weeks for all of us.

08-May-2011 our life. daily.
Today our friends, the Rainbows, came over to visit. Yes, the Rainbows. This is why it is important when choosing a boat name to consider that you will become known by that boat name or some derivation of it. In our case, the Bums. Perfect. In their case, the Rainbows. Fine for a boat full of lesbians perhaps, but Eric has a Grizzly Adams beard and runs a construction company. He’s most definitely not a Rainbow. But I digress.

This was Ouest’s first real chance to see her mama holding a baby. At first she found it fascinating, but after ten minutes of watching and waiting patiently she was ready to be the one being held again. It was cute to watch her with a baby and see her reactions and get that first sort of feeling of what our future has in store for us. I’m getting excited about it all now. Ouest will be a great big sister, and as a family I see nothing but good, albeit tiring, times ahead.

And this is why I don’t go overboard encouraging Ali to cook. Somehow she still has all of her fingers.

For the past couple of months I’ve been carrying around a pocketknife that is more suited to spreading butter than it is to cutting line, slicing apples, opening boxes, or any of the million things a day that a knife in the pocket comes in useful for. During that time I’ve been constantly dropping hints about how great Eric’s knife is and how nice it would be to have a nice knife like that. Ali would just roll her eyes and tell me to quit my whining and to, “Put that knife away,” or to “Quit leaving your knife lying around.” Things like that. I guess with a baby around you don’t leave knives out. Of course I figured mine was so dull and crappy that Ouest couldn’t actually hurt herself with it.

Anyway, today, Mother’s Day, the Rainbows show up and guess what they’ve got for me? Yep, Eric has a brand new knife, just like his. Turns out that Ali had e-mailed him on the sly and he’d offered to pick it up for her. After giving it to me he sort of half-jokingly brought out his engraver and asked Ali what she wanted it to say on it, and quick as can be she replied, “How about, Happy Mother’s Day Pat.” Ha ha. He engraved Bumfuzzle instead.

09-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
Today we made what we hope is our last West Marine run. It was just a sort of odds and ends trip. We picked up our new anchor snubber which the guys in the rigging shop did an awesome job of for us. Those guys have gone over the top hooking up Bumfuzzle since we first walked in the place. Also picked up some little bits and pieces for the winches, a couple of cleats, and the big purchase of the day, LED running lights. These things are kind of ingenious. The whole LED unit is built into a light bulb the same size as the existing light bulb for the Signal 40 running lights that we already have. So instead of having to purchase a whole new set up, we just have to buy bulbs. Hopefully they work as well as advertised, because at about a hundred bucks for the three of them I’m not going to be pleased if they start crapping out on me right away. If they do work they’ll save us a ton of power. On an overnight run they’d save about 30 amp hours, I’m guessing, which is a healthy enough chunk to make me give it a shot.

I continued work on the winches as well today. This is a much bigger undertaking than I anticipated. The winches on the mast weren’t so bad really, but the cockpit winches are considerably larger, and are attached in such a way as to make them almost impossible to remove. Not only are the nuts nearly inaccessible, but whoever put them on last time also gooped a big load of caulk on each one. Once it is off the cleaning begins, which is a good three hour chore per winch. The grease is baked hard from years and years of neglect. Everything has to be cleaned until it shines again, greased up, lubed up, and put back together again. I’m trying to get them perfect in anticipation of neglecting them myself for years and years after this.

10-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
After entirely too much time spent on the project, I’ve finally decided to just break down and spend a couple hundred bucks on a chart plotter and charts for the Mac. There is a free program out there that I was using, but I came to discover that it, along with most other PC chart plotters are really geared for use in the good ol’ USA. They all take advantage of NOAA’s free charts, but don’t support any of the good charts available for the rest of the world. I also tried a bunch of bootlegging options. But in the end I’ve just decided that sometimes free isn’t best. Especially considering the time I put into this mess. If I’d just decided to spend a little money on this stuff a month ago I would have freed up a lot of time for other things.

We’re going with the MacENC plotter and the Navionics charts. Overall the whole thing is inexpensive enough that if down the line I decide I’d prefer something else I won’t feel like I’m married to this set up. We’ll see how it goes.

So then, the current set up looks like this. The Macbook sits on the nav station with the Garmin handheld GPS plugged into one USB port and the other USB port is connected to the autopilot. That’s it. Basically the exact same thing we used when we left Florida eight years ago. Pretty sad that things haven’t progressed much beyond that. I mean they have if you want to really get into it and use wifi this and gobbledegoo that, but really all I want is to outline my course on the computer and have the autopilot steer that course so I don’t have to.

10-May-2011 our life. daily.
On the boat throughout the day we get all sorts of different lighting. Different angles, different intensities. At least a few times a day I catch Ouest staring at, and trying to comprehend, a shadow she is casting somewhere on the boat.

I removed another compass today. There were three on the boat when we moved aboard. Only one remains. They just don’t serve much of a purpose these days other than being suitably nautical looking. Anyway, I really couldn’t imagine the reason for having two of them within ten feet of each other in the cockpit, so one had to go.

This was the view from our bed this afternoon. Ouest and I had just come in from playing out on deck and were lying in bed reading when I looked up at this.

11-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
Last minute projects have me feeling like there are not nearly enough hours in the day. Chart program. Done. Charts. Download is huge and our connection here is crap. May never finish. The winches. Ohhhhh the winches. Three more hours today and I have just about gotten two of the big ones done. There are two big winches on each side at the back of the boat. Only one per side is getting done right now. This project completely overwhelmed me. Will be about a fifteen minute project next time, but oh my goodness am I tired of these things right now.

Ali has a list about half a page long of other miscellaneous small things that need doing. Most in some way related to keeping things secured on the boat once we start rocking and rolling. Weather window is still holding for the moment, but is still a few days out.

11-May-2011 our life. daily.
We got a new camera today. The Canon T3i. It’s pretty much the same body we had but with HD video included as well. Didn’t have much time to goof around with it today, but hope to take a few shots with it before we sail off. Nothing like trying to read a camera manual while riding ten foot swells.

Ouest has been a non-stop talker lately. And by talking I mean, “Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh…” She says eh at least ten times per minute from the time she wakes up until she goes to bed at night.

She has also become a voracious reader in the past week or two. Before when we read to her she would generally be bouncing off the walls at the same time. Now we lie in bed and read, and read, and read. The whole time she is next to us staring intently at the book, answering questions, pointing at things, and basically just being really involved in it. It’s great! Finally, something we can do that doesn’t require any physical exertion.

12-May-2011 our life. daily.
As of late this afternoon we still weren’t sure whether we’d be taking off this weekend or not. So today was a day full of running around. This morning I was walking along the dock and shivering when it suddenly occurred to me just how cold it was going to be the first few days out at sea. So a pair of long johns got added to today’s shopping list. ” Yep, we’re going to Mexico, don’t forget to pack the long johns.”

Basically what we’re really doing right now is not preparing to go to sea, it is preparing to be without a car. Once the car is gone the shopping stops and we’ll have to make do with what we have. Just another reason we’re anxious to get moving.

13-May-2011 our life. daily.
We had some long time Bum friends aboard today. They of course showed up with pizza and beer because if you’ve been reading this website for as many years as they have it just wouldn’t be acceptable to arrive any other way. It’s fun meeting people who we’ve known for years in some small way and seeing what they’re like in person. We’ve been getting e-mails that start with, “Hi Guys, It’s Pam from Prozac,” for as long as I can remember now.

Unfortunately Ouest had the hardest wake up of her entire life. She cried and cried when she saw the group of ladies assembled in the cockpit. But she’s teething again, and the past few days have been pretty tough on her. She hasn’t eaten a thing in two days now, she’s drooling, she’s sleeping restlessly, and her cheeks are as red as Santa’s. These are her last four molars though, and then we get four years or so of teething free bliss. Problem is then they start falling out, and neither Ali or I can avoid shuddering at the thought of pulling a tooth out. Although knowing Ouest they’ll just get knocked out from one fall or another.

13-May-2011 ouest lill. seventeen months.
Ouesterly,

It almost feels silly to call you a baby any longer. You are such the little girl these days. And so much like your mother it actually frightens me a little bit. If I leave my hat laying around the house you immediately point it out and show me where it belongs. If Mama is wiping down the table with a sponge, something that is seemingly done fifty times a day, you want to help her do it. Time to pick up toys? Not a problem either.

You really are growing up fast. You’re a great little girl. You listen to us, for the most part. You’re friendly with everyone, waving to each person that passes on the sidewalk. You take your nap like clockwork, and go to bed at night the same way. And you more or less sleep through the night. You have no qualms about sitting in the shower with the water pouring over your head for minutes on end, something that makes me very happy. You don’t throw things off the boat, yet. You play out on deck well. You derive great joy from drinking water out of a straw at restaurants. You are gentle with the baby growing in Mama’s belly, so far.

You have an incredibly deep love of flowers, spotting them from up to a mile away. Your love does not extend, however, to allowing them to continue to grow. Despite this, you are going to make a great environmentalist, and I can already hear the lectures from you if we don’t recycle something properly or we leave too large a footprint in our wake. You can spot birds and planes from any distance and are always sure to point them out to us. You love books and we now spend what seems like hours each day curling up, all three of us together, in our too little bed to read them. It’s probably my favorite pastime. And I haven’t even mentioned how cute you are. Tall, blonde, and blue-eyed. It’s sure to be a deadly combination.

Anyway little one, you continue to make us smile and laugh each day, something we might not always be doing if not for you. Thank you.

Love, Papa

15-May-2011 our life. daily.
Teething always sucks. Ouest isn’t in a lot of pain from it, from what we can tell, but it just throws her completely off. She has hardly eaten a thing now in four days, and she’s way moodier than she ever is. One minute we think everything is jolly and the next she is breaking down in our arms because of who knows what. Sometimes I can’t believe that we are just months away from starting this all over again. But then other times I can look at her and think, “I can’t believe that we are just months away from starting this all over again.” They might be the same words, but as Ali and I have told each other countless times over the years, “It’s all in the tone.”

15-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
Seeing as we’re about ready to take off again we thought this would be a good time to do the Bumfuzzle walkthrough. It can be hard to get a true feel for a boat from pictures so hopefully this will better convey the sense of space that is our home.

16-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
Money. It’s the foremost topic on the cruising dreamer’s mind. Ali and I started tracking our spending, right down to the penny, thanks to Ali’s OCD, when we first set out cruising. Many people thanked us for the numbers, and so we’ve continued to post them throughout our travels. This time out will be no different, starting today, with the boat cost number.

When we bought this Bumfuzzle we did so knowing that we’d dump at least another $30,000 into it. The boat cost $48,000, while all the other Spindrifts on the market at the time were listed at or above $99,000, so we figured the numbers would work out. We’d end up with a great boat outfitted with stuff we actually wanted for the same price as the others filled with junk from the eighties and nineties. We’ve still got sails, solar, and a dodger to buy at some point down the line, so the spending spree isn’t over, but we’re happy with where we’re at and with what we’ve done. So far, and I’m saying this while still tied securely to the dock, we love our boat.

As a side note, the number one piece of financial advice I have for people is to track your money for a few months. Categorize every cent. You’ll be amazed at how much more you spend on, say, lunch, than you thought you did. This one simple task will help you more than any other to spend less and save more, no matter what your financial situation is.

16-May-2011 our life. daily.

17-May-2011 our life. daily.
There is a strong southwester’ blowing through San Francisco at the moment. About the exact opposite of what one would normally expect around here this time of year. We’re cold, we’re wet, and we’re stuck. The sailing weather looks crappy for another week at least. Not only are there Southerlies blowing out there, but there is also a south swell. If there was one thing more than any other that pushed us to sell the last boat and travel by land it was the weather. Living life always at the mercy of Mother Nature can get a bit tiresome at times. Especially when you are as antsy as we are. When we want to move we want to move. Dammit. But hey, we’re the ones who bought another boat. This is our life for the foreseeable future.

Our buddy, Eric, dropped by today with a new freezer top built for us. This is pretty much the last piece for the kitchen. We just need to slap a couple coats of varnish on it and the kitchen will officially be checked off the list of things to do. Nice.

18-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
One of my favorite things about this boat is the inside steering station. Whether or not I ever actually use it, just the fact that it is there, looking all nautical-like in the middle of my living room, makes it worth having.

18-May-2011 our life. daily.
The sailing weather looks like crap for a while, so we’ve sort of slipped right out of preparing to leave mode and back in to just hanging out mode. Marina strolls in the morning, Home Depot and the park in the afternoon, and a walk around the docks before bed. That’s our day in a nutshell.

19-May-2011 our life. daily.
We are just three months (probably two and a half) away from a date with a baby. I still find it a bit surreal at times. With all that is going on it is sometimes hard to remember that Ali is pregnant and we’ve got another baby on the way. Believe it or not even Ali has admitted to feeling this way sometimes. But the reality is that the baby isn’t going to wait, and something is going to have to give soon. There’s no way to bend the weather to our will, but, man, every night I check it with my jaw clenched tight trying to squeeze a favorable forecast out of the computer. It hasn’t happened yet. If not for the baby on the way we wouldn’t be worrying much about it. Life is pretty good here. We’ve got our routine, Ouest is a happy little girl, and it’s pretty darn inexpensive. We can’t really complain. Though of course we still do.

20-May-2011 our life. daily.
We were walking down the dock today when we ran into some friends who had decided to pop on by to see if we were around. Excellent timing. We went to Rudy’s Can’t Fail, which has sort of become our defacto last minute relaxed food hang out. Good lunch and good conversation. Nice surprise for an otherwise rather drab day. Our friends are from San Jose, just a short drive down the highway from us, but even they couldn’t believe the weather here. They said it’s at least ten degrees colder here. And the wind. Always with the wind. There is a famous quote attributed to Twain, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” I can’t imagine anybody who lives here that would disagree.

21-May-2011 our life. daily.
We had another pop in this afternoon. This time our doctor friends (that’s what we like to call them because most of our friends are sheet rockers, body shop managers, or unemployed) dropped by to deliver a little care package for us. We aren’t normally very good about safety type stuff, but when someone offers to make us a big first-aid kit we’re happy to accept. And with the book they included I can now shatter my ankle, take a shot of morphine, reset the bones, construct a cast around it, and then for good measure I can install a steel plate in my head. Or, and this is slightly more likely, if Ouest slices open her toe on a shell I can clean the wound and bandage it up. Either way, it was very nice of them to hook us up with all this doctor type swag.

Tonight we officially became PC free. Our four-year-old PC has been struggling for breath lately, and we’ve been looking for any excuse to retire it. So when we made the switch to the Mac charting software we decided that was it, we were going all the way over. I am so happy to know that I will never again have to wait seven minutes for my computer to boot up. Or have to press Control again. Or run random anti-this-or-that software to try and fix the latest attack.

22-May-2011 our life. daily.
Ouest has always had a thing for hats. She has no problem at all with wearing them. And now she seems to have decided that hat wearing is something that her and I do together. She always wants her hat on, and she always wants me to put mine on as well. I’ll take it off just to scratch my scalp and she immediately jumps on me demanding that I put it back on. She woke up from her nap today with some tooth pain, and she was obviously not feeling all that great, but the first thing we had to do when we picked her up out of bed was to put her hat on. And then she laid her head down on her mama’s shoulder and looked just about as sweet and sad as any little girl in the history of little girls. Moments like that I think my chest is going to explode.

23-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
One of the frustrating things about San Francisco weather is that what is going on offshore has absolutely nothing to do with what is happening inside the bay. According to my weather GRIBs the wind was blowing a good thirty knots a couple miles offshore about the same time I took this picture. We could be puttering around the Bay I suppose, but it feels instead like we need to simply back out of the dock and head out the Golden Gate to really start this thing off right. Sailing around the Bay is for day sailors, heading out the Gate and turning left is for cruisers. Might sound silly, but that’s the mind-set at the moment. Anyway, shouldn’t be long now.

23-May-2011 our life. daily. san francisco bay.
We continue to just sort of stagger through the days around here full of anticipation. We’re watching the weather constantly and trying to resist the urge to will the forecasts to say things that they really aren’t trying to say. With a boat, and certainly with a seventeen month-old baby, there is never a shortage of ways to fill a day, so we just continue to explore with her, finish up some tinkering jobs around the boat, and double check our lists so that when we sail away and leave the car behind we don’t say, “Oh, did you pick up such and such at the store?”

24-May-2011 our life. daily. san francisco bay.
We sold our steps today. The giant three step platform complete with handrail that made our boat look remarkably similar to a permanently moored houseboat. With it gone we hung the swim ladder off the side and began taking turns hauling ourselves up and down to get on and off the boat. A couple hours after the steps were gone Ali looked at me smiling and said, “I like the boat so much better without the steps. We look like a boat that’s going somewhere.”

For lunner today we drove to a funky area of Oakland. One of those streets that are battling to gentrify but can’t quite make the leap. The kind with a Starbucks next door to a really filthy looking Korean food place, and brand new condos built atop the Goodwill. After we ate we wandered the streets a bit and stumbled into some sort of store that sold nothing but junk. Their motto was something along the lines of, “Don’t throw anything away, we’ll take it, and sell it.” Random family Christmas photos for a dime, pieces of sea glass for thirty cents each, hundreds of cds for a quarter with not a single band’s name that I recognized, and bins full of broken toys, naked Barbies, and board games with maybe half their pieces. Ouest loved the place. And hey, we even managed to drop three bucks on books and crayons.

At the restaurant today the manager decided during our meal would be a good time to vacuum. Ouest, like a lot of kids her age I think, has a strong aversion to vacuum cleaner noise. Something about that one noise freaks her out. So we asked him to stop, and he did. But then during the rest of our meal every time Ouest caught a glimpse of this guy she totally freaked out, got a horrified teary look on her face, and put her arms out to us. Sad. I’m glad that being scared of people isn’t a regular occurrence with her. She’s started to be a little more shy around new faces lately, but it usually just consists of her holding onto our leg while we talk to whoever it is.

Ouest also found the candy machines at the restaurant. I can’t tell you how nice it is to have a daughter that is so completely oblivious to what candy is that she doesn’t even ask for it. She’s never had a piece. She walks right up to a bank of candy machines and spends five minutes twisting the dials and lifting the little flaps and then grows bored of it and walks away. I hope we can keep her in this state of ignorant bliss for a couple of more years at least.

25-May-2011 our life. daily. san francisco bay.
We’re finally off tomorrow. It’s not much of a weather window, but it’s one good day, and at this point we’ll take one good day. We didn’t have much to do to get ready really. We picked up a couple gallons of milk, signed the title to our car over to our friend, went to the park, and filled the water tanks. I tried to have one of our propane tanks topped off but the gas station wouldn’t do it. Tank is too old the guy says. Apparently they were younger in Rio Vista. And I’m sure it will look like a spring chicken by the time it gets to Mexico. People and their rules and regulations. Just fill the stupid tank man.

I really can’t express how ready I am to be on the move. Voyaging again. It’s exciting. On the one hand I feel like an old salt. Like I’ve done this a million times. Preparing to leave is always the same. Buy a little food, top off the water and the diesel, and go. No big deal once you’ve done it a few times. On the other hand, this is all new to us. We’re sailing a monohull, in cold water, with a seventeen month-old baby onboard, and my right hand woman nearly seven months pregnant. The differences really couldn’t be any bigger than they are between the last time we sailed blue water and this time. Yet the only concern I have right now is that I hope Ouest gets along all right and doesn’t give Ali too hard a time. Not that I won’t be there to help her out, but my primary job will be driving the boat, Ali’s will be taking care of the baby. That’s just our reality right now.

Anyway, I’m sure we’ll all do just fine, the boat will perform flawlessly, and by tomorrow night we’ll be excited to be floating somewhere all new to us, and on our way to Mexico to have another baby and continue the adventure that has become our life.

26-May-2011 our life. daily. santa cruz.
Amazing. We said we had to leave at 7:30 this morning and we actually got off the dock before seven. A quick stop at the fuel dock and we were on our way. It was an absolutely beautiful morning. Bright blue skies, flat water, and maybe ten knots of wind blowing through the Gate on our nose. We motored peacefully the seven miles or so across the Bay, right past Alcatraz where we were very nearly run over by a ferry doing about fifty knots, and then out underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. There are certain landmarks that sailors have on their life lists, and we’ve ticked off a couple of them, the Panama Canal, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and now the Golden Gate. We’re through it, and with it comes a whole new adventure for our family.

The forecast was for nice light winds all day, but with a big nine foot swell from the west. Right on our beam. The swell was the tradeoff we made for the sun and easy winds. Throughout the day the wind built slowly and clocked around behind us. Around two we had the Yankee out and were motorsailing along at over eight knots. The winds continued to increase, the swell and now the waves were right behind us, and two hours out from our destination we were motoring dead downwind in true winds of thirty-six knots. Sure we could have been sailing, but there is going to be a steep learning curve on this boat. Sailing this thing is absolutely nothing like sailing the cat. And with me being essentially a single-hander with regards to the sails right now, I had no problem taking the easy way out and motoring along at close to eight knots.

We were only about two miles out of the Gate when Ouest threw up. She’d just finished eating a banana and insisted on going down below to read books on the bed. That was clearly a parenting oversight on our part. Right out of the Gate was the messiest slop of the trip, and being down below in the forward cabin was no place to be. So a quick throw up and then back outside to enjoy the fresh air. She fell asleep soon afterward, took a nice nap, and then woke up fully recharged the rest of the day. She ate well, played well, and looked well. No signs of seasickness. Ali felt pretty good all day. A little stomach turning every now and then, but she is pregnant after all. And I felt great all day. No seasickness at all. I employed our old trick which is to take a Dramamine the night before a passage, and then another in the morning. I don’t know if it was the pills or the gentle lumbering motion of the boat, but we were both happy not to be getting sick.

In the afternoon Ali was making Ouest dinner when I looked down and discovered her making tomato soup. “Are you crazy?” I asked.

“Why, because if she throws up again?” Well crap, I didn’t even think of that.

“I was actually thinking because she is a baby and we’re on a sailboat in ten foot seas.”

“Oh. She’ll be fine.” And of course she was.

We pulled into Soquel Cove, which is a couple miles past the rolly Santa Cruz anchorage, and grabbed a mooring. It was almost eight o’clock, a long day, eighty-one miles, behind us. We immediately put Ouest to bed, tidied up the boat, ate a bowl of Cheerios, and went to bed ourselves.

Our friends Nick and Megan took a bunch of shots of us leaving the Bay this morning too. Pretty cool. Their photos, obviously, are the ones taken from anywhere but on the boat. I love how they show just how vast the ocean can be, even in the confines of San Francisco Bay. Not to mention how utterly alone we are out there despite the thousands upon thousands of boats in the Bay.

26-May-2011 bumfuzzle.
All right, so it’s obvious that much of my writing over the next few weeks is going to revolve around comparing this boat to our catamaran. Nobody ever goes from owning a catamaran to a monohull. It’s unheard of, and for good reason it turns out.

Hey, the fact of the matter is, cats are better. They are also three times as expensive. Not twice as expensive, but three times. So after thirty-three thousand miles on a cat, and a hundred miles on a monohull, my advice is this: If you can afford the cat without delaying your trip or cutting into the time you will be able to spend out cruising, then by all means buy that dream cat of yours. If you can buy the monohull and get out cruising today or spend a couple more years working to buy the cat, then just get the mono and get out there. Simple as that.

This boat isn’t nearly as comfortable on the water as our cat. At least in today’s conditions. We had a big swell on our beam most of the day which caused us to roll around quite a bit. The cat would have floated up and over these without us even noticing. Once the wind was dead behind us the mono actually rode nearly as good as the cat. But every few minutes a wave would catch it just a little off and throw us a little to the side causing a nice big roll from one side to the other and back again. The boat does roll nice and slowly though, leaving us enough time to support ourselves before it completes the process.

Overall I don’t hate it nearly as much as I expected to. In fact I didn’t really mind it at all. Ali did really well too. She laughed and said, “This is stupid” once. Summing up the motion of a monohull in one simple sentence. And Ouest? She didn’t care. We had to keep one hand on her at all times because she isn’t really understanding what is happening yet. But I did see her brain working a couple of times when she decided to crawl for something rather than stand up and walk. She’ll get it.

What else did we learn our first day out? We figured out that we need plates and bowls with a rubber bottom on them to keep from sliding all over. We learned that in rolly seas Ali will not be cooking anything on the stove.

I figured out that peeing off of a monohull is not nearly as easy as peeing off of a cat.

We found that Ali did a good job of organizing the boat as we didn’t have anything fly out of a cabinet, and when we did open cabinets to get something out nothing fell on us.

I learned why monohull sailors are so worried about safety. It’s because these rolly beasts are not nearly as safe and secure feeling as a cat. You really do need to have one hand holding onto the boat at all times. Because at any second this thing can roll and send you running full speed across to the other side. On the cat even in rough seas we could wander around the deck as if we were on land.

I discovered that we need a dodger. If for no other reason than as a place to attach handholds. I also discovered that having a dodger is going to completely obliterate any view we have from the cockpit. Even with windows.

We figured out that we need more storage outside and in. Just little places to stick the camera or toys while we’re underway.

But most of all we figured out that cat or mono, it doesn’t really make much difference as long as we are out here. Cruising along the wild California coast, watching the swell smash against the rocks on shore, watching the dolphins play around us, and watching my daughter stare through the netting at the water rushing past her.

27-May-2011 our life. daily. santa cruz.
Today could not have started out any better. Ouest slept until eight and when she got up we poked our head outside to this.

The weather forecast was good for today, but really ugly stuff is building in for the weekend around Point Conception. Not a place you go through in bad weather unless you enjoy getting punched in the face. So because we couldn’t reach that far south today there really wasn’t a whole lot of options on where to go to wait this weather out. We could either hole up right here in Santa Cruz or we could sail twenty miles further to Monterey. We eventually opted to go to Monterey. Ouest had breakfast and then we motored out with no wind and just a little swell. It looked like this.

About an hour later we were inside looking at the charts and playing games with Ouest when the engine hesitated and then slowly died. All right, no need to panic, open the engine compartment and take a look around. I spotted coolant dripping out of the overflow hole in the cap, felt the heat exchanger and realized we seemed to be running hot. Shut down automatically from overheating? Does this engine do that? I don’t know for sure, but it seemed like the answer. So I started troubleshooting that. Engine oil, right where it should be. Good. Maybe we sucked some kelp into the raw water intake? Unscrewed the top of the strainer and water gushed through. Seems okay. Maybe the impeller? I don’t know, that was just changed, and we had good water flow when we left an hour earlier. Seemed unlikely. At a loss I just decided to let it cool down for a bit, fire it back up, and see what we could figure out with it running again.

So the engine cooled down and I turned the key. It turned over wonderfully, but never fired. Has to be air in the fuel line. I opened up the bleeder valve on the first fuel filter and sure enough it was dry. Okay, I thought I had figured that problem out last time, but apparently not. No big deal though, I’ll just bleed it and we’ll be on our way again. Bleeding the fuel line requires opening up the bleeder valve and then pumping the fuel pump with my finger. I pumped and pumped until my fingers were raw but never got fuel to flow. I opened up both fuel tanks but got nothing from the pump. I tried starting a couple more times and then pumping and still got nothing. After two hours of pumping it was pretty clear that the fuel pump had crapped out on us. As a last resort I tried to fill the fuel filters manually, but that didn’t work either. I was out of options. We raised the sail and started to slowly make our way back towards Santa Cruz.

A few months back we purchased BoatUS tow insurance. We bought it because I was fairly certain that at some point meandering down the shallow Delta we would run aground and need to get towed off. Well that didn’t happen, but today we got to make our money back on that little investment. About two miles out from Santa Cruz we called them up on the VHF, got an immediate reply, and within just minutes they were at our boat and I was hooking up their tow lines. I felt like an utter and complete jerk-off.

There really wasn’t any drama with the tow. They pulled us in, and we slid up to the end of the dock. The craziest thing though? They brought us in and put us right behind a boat they had brought in at one in the morning. And that boat was? Yep, a Spindrift. Crazier still, we were talking to them a couple hours later at the dock and they told us they had just passed yet another Spindrift that was on its way to the harbor. This one hadn’t broken down yet, but we were all sure it was just a matter of time.

An hour after docking I was in the local chandlery ordering a new fuel pump. At the same time I ran into the owners of the other Spindrift and asked, “I don’t suppose you guys have got a spare fuel pump?” They weren’t sure because they had just bought the boat themselves and this had been their first passage in it, coming north. But he said he’d take a look. A couple of hours later we came back to the boat and sure enough, he had a brand new fuel pump in the box for me. It looks a little different than mine, but tomorrow I’ll dive in and attack that pump and then we’ll find out if we’re going to be back in business even before the long holiday weekend gets rolling, or if we’ll be waiting until next week for the other pump to show up. Either way it doesn’t really matter much as looking at the updated weather it doesn’t look like we’ll be going anywhere for a while anyway. Of course there are worse spots to be pinned down than Santa Cruz.

Really the worst part was feeling let down by the engine. Frankly, for me, only having one engine is probably the single biggest drawback to a monohull. With the cat we could always keep going. We blew up one engine in New Zealand and just motored on with the other. We lost a propeller in the Red Sea and motored a few hundred miles further on just the other engine. Either of those things happens with this boat and we’re seriously stuck. Like, crap, we’d have to sail the damn thing. Imagine that.

Did Ouest give a crap about any of this?

28-May-2011. bumfuzzle.
This morning I started work on the fuel pump. This is yet another one of those boat projects that could easily have taken ten minutes if only, only, somebody had considered for a moment that somebody, someday, somewhere, might need to have access to it. The fuel pump is only two bolts. But directly in front of those two bolts is a raw water cooling hose, and also, mounted just 1/16th of an inch from the face of the fuel pump, is the oil filter and the two lines running into that. I couldn’t get the water hose free so ended up just cutting it off. Getting a new one on should be a fun project in itself. The oil filter mount was easy enough as well, but will take at least three hands to hook up again.

Anyway, Ouest is napping. I need to run out and buy some hose, and then tackle the reinstall after lunner.

Back to work in the afternoon and amazingly the reinstall went completely without a hitch. The pump went right in, and after getting the fuel lines hooked back up I began the bleeding process. It took a while with all of the filters empty, but fuel was flowing again which was all that mattered. With the lines bled I hooked the water hose that I’d found onboard up, reattached the oil filter mounting, opened up the raw water intake, topped off the coolant, and turned the key. Two seconds later she was running smoothly again. I let it run a while and all looked good. Good water flow, good temperature, and good oil pressure. Still not sure if the engine really did overheat for sure, but tomorrow I’m going to take a look at the impeller and open up the heat exchanger just to make sure everything looks good. I do find the coincidence in getting this part amazing. The other Spindrift was just purchased by another couple our age with three kids who are going to live aboard. The odds of them breaking down and being pulled in here just hours before us have to be astronomical.

Spot the new pump in there?

I was riding high after this. There is no better feeling than working on something and having it work when you are done. Twenty-four hours after being pulled in here on a holiday weekend we’d somehow managed to get the part we needed and get it fixed. Pretty sweet. That’s why we try not to get to worked up over breakdowns. They happen and there’s not much we can do about it. We’ve still got another new fuel pump on order and that may be going with us as a spare, but otherwise we’re ready to roll again.

28-May-2011 our life. daily. santa cruz.
To: Pat and Ali
Re: comparison btwn mono and cat

I would say that your comparison is limited to what you have sailed. You have bought a monohull that sails like a dog. Try sailing a new faster monohull before you make blanket statements.

People never cease to amaze me. To read our website and then be offended by my blanket characterization of an inanimate object, a monohull in this case, is just plain ridiculous. But funny ridiculous. I mean there are just so many other things that should offend you before that. So thank you for the insightful e-mail. I sincerely apologize for hurting your mono-feelings. No, sincerely. Really. I mean it. Sincerely. Now, Ali and I are going to go out this afternoon and charter a brand new “faster” monohull so I may then begin making blanket statements again.

Now I realize we haven’t been to every marina in the world, so I really shouldn’t express an opinion on this, but I’m going to anyway. This Santa Cruz Marina is like none other we’ve ever been in. This one actually gets used. Overused in our opinion. We really can’t stand this much hustle and bustle around our boat. The marina is chock full and we’re stuck in the worst slip in the place, on the gas dock closest to the entrance. We’ve got constant surge, but worse we’ve got dinghy, or Laser, or whatever you call them, racers all over the place. In one day we had two of them crash into us. They flip their boats over in the middle of the channel and then can’t get them back up. We’re downwind so eventually they come plowing into us mast first. I lift the mast up to keep it from completely gouging the boat and then the boat comes upright and slams into us as well. They’re teenage kids, having fun, and it is an accident, but seriously, this is our house not a bumper boat.

And then this afternoon I came back to the boat to find six harbor police standing around it. I ran through a mental list of things I could be under arrest for, came up with nothing felonious, and continued down the ramp. Then I noticed that they had moved our boat forward thirty feet. I’ve never even considered that my boat would be moved without my permission or without me around. I guess that’s just what they do here in Santa Cruz.

Then again the marina is right on a nice beach, there are parks, restaurants, and people everywhere out enjoying it. So while it’s not the peace and quiet we’re accustomed to, it isn’t all bad either.

29-May-2011 our life. daily. santa cruz.
We went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk today. What a cool place. An amusement park on the water for a hundred years and you can still walk through the gate for free, ride a century-old merry-go-round, a classic wooden roller coaster, surf, lie on the beach, or just hang out with a corn dog and a forty-ounce Budweiser.

We had a good time wandering around at Ouest’s pace, which varies between glacial and hyper without notice. The crowds were huge today with the weather absolutely perfect and the holiday tomorrow. We enjoyed just walking the strip and people watching. Ouest and I did attempt one ride today on the merry-go-round. While waiting in line the music sort of put her in a sleepy trance so that when our time came to go she was groggy. I climbed on a horse with her, and she perked up over the jewels on it, but then the worker came over to instruct us on how to wrap the seat belt around her. For some reason she decided she didn’t like this girl and started to cry. Then the girl said they couldn’t start the ride if she was crying. So I’m trying to calm her down, but the girl wouldn’t leave, and Ouest couldn’t look at her without crying, so off we went. The shortest three dollar merry-go-round ride in history.

The reason Ali is laughing in this last picture is because Ouest has been doing this sort of crinkly nosed smile more and more lately. And if you go back and look at pictures of Ali from about ages one to eight this is exactly the smiling face you see. Genetics are a wondrous thing.

30-May-2011 our life. daily. santa cruz.
For some reason Ouest was having a tough night of sleep last night, waking up every hour or so and not being able to get herself back to sleep. So when, at two o’clock in the morning just as I was quietly stepping out of her room, I heard a loud thump and running feet on deck, I wasn’t too happy. I looked outside and saw that TowBoatUS was rafting a boat up to us. Like I said before, we are in the worst slip in the marina, closest to the entrance and with the most surge. We are in constant motion no matter what we do with the lines. We’d been told they don’t raft boats up to other boats on this slip, but here they were, at the direction of the Harbor Police.

And as total coincidence would have it, the boat was that very Spindrift, Spindrift number three that we had joked about them towing in here two days ago. They’d already done two Spindrifts that day, why not a third. Well turns out these guys sailed on past headed for the Bay. Seven miles short of Half Moon Bay they ran out of fuel, and for whatever reason couldn’t make it there sailing. They turned around and sailed back here instead, but then ran out of wind four miles from this entrance. They called for a tow, got brought in, and shelled out over six hundred dollars for the privilege.

For whatever reason the Police refused to let them tie up at the empty gas dock directly behind us. Since diesel was all these people needed it would have seemed obvious, but there are those rules and regulations standing in the way of common sense once again. We got them tied off to us and then nobody in our boat got any sleep the rest of the night as we both swung to and fro with the surge and close to forty tons of boat between us.

This is really the strangest marina we’ve ever been in. I’ve never been in a place that anybody would even step foot on a boat without first getting permission from the owner, yet here we’ve had our boat moved while we ate lunch, and then we were boarded in the middle of the night with no prior warning. Whatever, I guess, we certainly wouldn’t be coming back.

We continue to enjoy the immediate area around the marina though. There is a great Mexican restaurant right on the beach fifty yards away, and the beach itself is a lot of fun. Ouest is a happy camper.

Because the marina bathrooms are fairly skanky, Ouest’s bath time has been moved back aboard. Much to her delight tonight.

31-May-2011 our life. daily. santa cruz.
A couple of weeks back we did an interview with Latitude38 magazine. It was probably the most fun we’ve had being interviewed. The editor was great, and she’d brought along her husband, supposedly as a co-interviewer, but more so because he’d been following the website since we were way back in the Pacific the first time around. Anyway, we all just sat around, talked, and had a good time. Here is the article by LaDonna for Latitude38.

Today is our fourteenth wedding anniversary. That is two seven year itches come and gone. How do we do it? Well apparently we buy boats and go sailing. Believe me, there is no itching to be done when you are both living in a space this small. Be pretty tricky of me to run off in the dinghy in the middle of the night to carry on a liaison with another cruiser. I’d have to get one of those really quiet electric dinghy motors. Anyway, our seventh wedding anniversary was about six months into our first boat, and now, seven years later we’re a little more than six months into our second boat. My oh my how the time does fly when you’re having fun.

Funny, I just looked at last year’s entry for this date and it says we celebrated over Taco Bell burritos. Today we had burritos again, just not Taco Bell. And really, that’s only because we couldn’t find one in walking distance. A couple pics to reminisce.

Here is Ali getting a little too cute with my best man. I’d have been a fool not to marry her.

Our first dance. Swaying to Wild Horses by the Sundays. Still pretty stoked about that choice of tune.

And come on now, who doesn’t love a good ol’ Carnival Cruise Line honeymoon? Can’t you just sense the adventurous side in us from this picture? Look at Ali, two hours of sleep and no shower due to me falling back to sleep after answering the hotel wake-up call. We just barely made the flight that morning. I love this picture. Nineteen-ninety-seven.